The Contract
by Soleya
Summary: Jack has a new job. And a new nemesis. Post-season 8.
1. Chapter 1

Thanks to the time change, General Jack O'Neill had caught a flight at a perfectly reasonable time and still landed at Nellis well before lunch. He lost an hour to hobnobbing, which he hated even when his stomach didn't growl the whole time. _It_ hadn't changed time, after all. Still, he opted for a candy bar from a vending machine rather than trying to find lunch at 1030.

They gave him a driver, though the warehouse wasn't far. Dismissing the man, he wound his way through forklifts and men in ratty polos and slightly better t-shirts on his way to the entrance. Seeing so many civilians on the project always gave him pause. They were building spaceships, after all.

Of course, they didn't know that. But when the order had come down for multiple next-gen craft at the same time, Carter and the design team had made it very clear that they would need more labor. Lots more labor. And with a war going on, that meant they'd chopped the project into modular pieces, much like the International Space Station, so the rough work could be done by contractors without giving away the nature of the whole.

And that was great and all, but it was still weird. Civilians building spaceships: weird.

His first order of business, as usual, was to find Carter. Other people tended to get shifty, telling him what they thought he wanted to hear, but she didn't pull punches. And he liked that.

There were hundreds of people – civilian and military alike – in the hangar, and it usually took a fair amount of time (and several trips back and forth) to track her down. But luckily, this time, she was easy to find. Because he could hear her.

Because she was yelling.

"Well, you're not gonna leave it like _that_!"

"It's to the specification," a male voice answered.

"For the ninth time, I don't care. You either pull a second cable, or preferably, repull two gauge."

They were up on a scaffolding, and Jack saw the man scoff. "Two gauge? What we pulled is up to code."

"I'm well aware what code says," she shot back. "And I'm telling you it's insufficient for this application. It won't work."

"The neutral doesn't even carry current!" he protested. "It'll work just fine."

Jack didn't need to understand the conversation to know his former teammate was about to eat the civilian alive. "Please explain to me how you can know that when you don't even know what you're wiring for. When you have no idea what equipment this rack will be powering. Do you need to go look up non-linear loads and the kind of harmonics they can produce?"

"It is to spec," he spat. "And I'm not gonna change it just for the Pentagon to do a walk-through and tell me it's wrong and have to redo it. Again."

"First of all, no one's going to complain about an oversized neutral, and if they do, send them to me. Second, that's why you put in a _change order_ ," she pressed. "And I'm really not sure why you're so resistant to that idea when every change, every adder is more money in your pocket."

"We have other jobs to do, lady," the man said, and though Jack could no longer see them from the bottom of the steps, he cringed a little in pity for him. "What you're asking will take my guys another week."

"A week?" she scoffed. "Two guys, six hours. To do _all_ of these modules." A second passed before she said, "And _that's_ why you don't want to do it, isn't it? You don't think it's worth your time to do all the paperwork for what it's actually going to cost. You're waiting until completion, when it'll be harder to do and take longer."

Jack cleared the top of the stairs and stepped into the fray before she could toss the man off the scaffold. "What's goin' on?"

"The neutral wire they pulled is undersized," Carter told him. "It's going to melt. And maybe catch fire."

Well, that sounded exciting.

"Every wire we've pulled on this site is to spec and code," the man argued.

Before she could start in on him again – and she was ready to – he asked magnanimously, "What would it take to just do what she wants?"

"I can't do anything without an approved change order."

He raised an eyebrow. "Approved by _whom_?"

"The Pentagon. Turnaround time is about a month. Probably longer, because they just got some new guy. O'Neill."

"Ah. Well, then, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the turnaround time."

"Yeah? He's a real rubber stamper, huh?"

Jack could only blink at him for a moment as his former second's anger came into sudden clarity. She beat him to the punch. "He's not usually, no," she told the civilian. "But he _is_ standing right in front of you."

It was incredibly satisfying to watch the blood drain entirely from the guy's face.

"Carter," the general said congenially, "make this man a list of all the things you need to be happy." Turning his icy stare back to the contractor, he ordered, "Make. Her. Happy. Because when my top astrophysicist is unhappy, I get unhappy. And I promise you that if I'm unhappy, you'll be in Hell."

"But I... we... we have a contract!" he stammered.

"You have this one. Screw it up, and I wouldn't count on any others. I'll approve your change order. But you try to take me for a ride – and she'll know – I'll have you on federal fraud charges. Are we clear?"


	2. Chapter 2

The first bite of mystery meat hit his stomach like a stone, and Jack cursed himself for waiting to long to eat. He'd actually created something of a normal schedule now that he worked a desk all day, and apparently his body was getting too used to it. Shoving another forkful in his mouth, he chewed it more thoroughly.

Thin fingers set a tray on the other side of the table, and he glanced up to see Carter smiling at him. "Since I didn't get to say this earlier," she began, settling in across from him, "hi, sir."

"Well, hey there, Carter!" he greeted with entirely too much dry enthusiasm. "How goes it?"

"Better now. I'd been fighting with that man over one thing or another all morning."

"Glad I could help." And then, under his breath, he growled, "Asshole."

She grinned.

He stabbed another piece of meat, but abandoned the fork entirely. "Rubber stamper. Is that who I am now? Is that all I do?"

"He has no idea what you do, sir."

Mouth twisted, he grumbled, "No, I think he may have it pretty well pegged."

"Atlantis," she challenged. "Prometheus. You'll have a whole fleet soon."

"They manage themselves ninety-nine percent of the time. And I approve requisition forms. Purchase orders."

Her shoulders bobbed in a shrug. "Maybe. But the people you command trust you in a crisis. And even when it's just requisitions and leave requests and personnel shifts, they know you're looking out for them. For the little guy. Like me."

He snorted. "When have you ever been 'the little guy' in this program, Carter?"

"I was today."

Okay, she had a point.

"Sir, the enemy you face now is the most organized I've ever seen. They are greedy, self-serving, underhanded – more nefarious than the Goa'uld could ever be. Government contractors."

She watched him consider that for a moment, one thinking face after the other. On number four, she asked, "Sir?"

"I'm debating whether I want to get in his face again or just send him strategically placed angry glares for the rest of the afternoon."

The grin started at one corner of her mouth and spread wide. "And you thought this job had no perks."

Satisfied, he picked up his fork and went back to his lunch.


End file.
